Tracy students arrested for bomb threats at schools

Friday

Mar 15, 2013 at 12:01 AM

TRACY - Two teens were arrested for an apparent hoax Thursday after two high schools in the Tracy Unified School District received bomb threats for the second time in a week, forcing officials to order evacuations for the second day in a row.

Jason Anderson

TRACY - Two teens were arrested for an apparent hoax Thursday after two high schools in the Tracy Unified School District received bomb threats for the second time in a week, forcing officials to order evacuations for the second day in a row.

Authorities said Tracy Unified was one of numerous school districts throughout the state that experienced disruptive and dangerous behavior this week as students sought to disrupt mandatory California High School Exit Exam testing.

Kimball High School students and staff were evacuated at 1:35 p.m. Thursday after someone called the school and said there was a bomb in a specific location on campus, district spokeswoman Jessica Cardoza said. Students were instructed to go to the school's football stadium until they were allowed to leave when the school day ended at 3:30 p.m., Cardoza said.

Officials at Tracy High School instructed their students to leave immediately as school ended about 3 p.m. Thursday when, for the second time in two days, someone found graffiti in a boys' bathroom containing a reference to a bomb on that campus, Cardoza said. Those threats were similar to one at Kimball on March 7, when someone found an unspecified threat written in graffiti in a bathroom, Cardoza said.

In addition to the evacuations, school officials notified parents of the threats and contacted the Tracy Police Department, which searched both campuses with bomb-sniffing dogs. No explosive devices were found at either school, but police arrested two Tracy students Thursday in connection with Wednesday's threat, authorities said. Additional suspects have been identified, Cardoza said, and more arrests could be made.

"These two juveniles, along with any others found participating in the threats, will be prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows," Tracy police Sgt. Kami Ysit said. "What may seemingly be horseplay to the youth involved in fact places the safety of all residents at risk. While police and fire resources are consumed responding to these hoaxes, someone truly experiencing an emergency requiring public safety could be placed at risk."

In an automated message sent out Thursday, Tracy Unified told parents the threats were taken seriously, even though school officials did not believe they were credible.

"We take every single threat seriously, so the time and energy and money spent on behalf of the school district and the Tracy Police Department is great," Cardoza said. "We are trying to impress upon our students that threats are not jokes, that they are considered a felony, which is punishable by imprisonment, and that any student found guilty of a threat is automatically put up for expulsion."